For me, the weekend means a whole lot of writing. I usually struggle to begin and that gets me thinking. No matter how many stories I may have written or how many times I may have been published, the fear of the blank page remains.

Fingers poised above the keyboard, my mind starts reeling and shows me all kinds of nightmares. I cannot do this, the words won’t come. My story doesn’t click, nobody is going to like it. Or the plain old – I am rubbish, who am I kidding.

Trust me, happens all the time. I must have written countless stories and poetry but even today, every time I sit down and try and put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), I am plagued by these thoughts.

Telling yourself that you are grand is not going to help. Friends and family loving every little thought you put to paper, is not going to help. Even being published is not going to help. A lot of published writers are just like us aspiring writers. They fear the blank page.

What is going to help however, is writing. Whenever I am in the ‘I am rubbish. I can’t do this’ mode, I find that writing helps. Anything, absolutely anything that comes into my head. I always find that once I write, it makes me feel better. Indeed when I re-read what I have written, I find it at least usable if not the ‘absolutely, most brilliant piece of writing ever’.

So my advice, for when you feel rubbish, is to Just Write whatever comes to your head and you will find that it’s usable, at the very least.